Compare/Contrast Jiddu Krishnamurti to Slavoj Zizek

Jiddu Krishnamurti contrasts with Slavoj Zizek, the man quoted in an earlier post, in too many ways to count. But, somehow, I find parallels in their work. I wonder what you will find?

On one hand, Slavoj Zizek (quoted in the post below this one) is a skittish, hyperactive, psycho-analytical Marxist, even a confessed pseudo-Stalinist, Continental Philosopher. However, he regularly pokes fun at Marxist academics, and he would agree that Marxism as such is essentially dead.

Focusing on ideology, Zizek comments on everything, from international politics to toilets to David Lynch films. He primarily cites:

The late modern Catholic Theologian Chesterton (who says that Christ himself exemplifies atheism while crying out for God on the cross); Hegelian state analysis (State law is justice, de facto); and French psycho-analyst Jaqcues Lacan, who asserted that humans act to fulfill a "Death Drive" (fetishizing immortality while being repulsed by it) and maintain a psychological process called jouissance (a french word best translated to mean "enjoyment" in the context of "orgasm") -- the circular rotation of desires around a central object which is never itself realized or "touched".

Zizek thinks that we cannot escape this feedback loop until we withdraw, devote ourselves to theory, and concoct a new Utopia that is not so reliant on allowing individual enjoyment.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, on the other hand, is a man who is difficult to describe in standard academic jargon, and he would likely appreciate that. While he may agree with Zizek on a few, rather particular aspects of human psychology, he takes a different (not necessarily opposite) perspective on the struggles Zizek analyses to death.

Krishnamurti would be most simply classified as a philosopher... but not really. I appreciate that he is more genuinely described as a sincere, "spiritually" deep thinker. Glad to know there is space in this world for such people.

He didn't like extended conceptual or empirical analyses. Instead, he preferred focusing on the problems inherent to the human experience, not the interaction of consciousness with the object it creates.

He didn't really like being quoted, and he is not easy to quote. But, here goes...

"And when you are so enclosed so bound, can any help reach you? But when you are open, there is unending help in all things, from the song of a bird to the call of a human being, from the blade of grass to the immensity of the heavens. The poison and corruption begin when you look to one person as your authority, your guide, your saviour."

"Interest, curiosity, is the beginning of acquisition, which soon becomes boredom; and the urge to be free from boredom is another form of possession. So the mind goes from boredom to interest to boredom again, till it is utterly weary; and these successive waves of interest and weariness are regarded as existence."

---- Excerpts from the book COMMENTARIES ON LIVING SERIES II

"In the same way if you negate what is not religion then you find out what is true religion; that is, what is the truly religious mind. Belief is not religion, and the authority which the churches, the organized religions assume, is not religion. In that there is all the sense of obedience, conformity, acceptance, the hierarchical approach to life."

"Therefore a religious mind is a mind that is constantly aware, sensitive, attentive, so that it goes beyond itself into a dimension where there is no time at all."

---- TALKS AND DIALOGUES SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA A.B.C. TELEVISION INTERVIEW 20TH NOVEMBER, 1970

"Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine. You suffer patiently, submitting to the cruelties of environment, when you, individually, have the possibilities of changing them."

---- 1933-12-30 2nd Public Talk, Adyar, Madras, India


"We are not loved because we don't know how to love. What is love? The word is so loaded and corrupted that I hardly like to use it. Everybody talks of love - every magazine and newspaper and every missionary talks everlastingly of love. I love my country, I love my king, I love some book, I love that mountain, I love pleasure, I love my wife, I love God. Is love an idea? If it is, it can be cultivated, nourished, cherished, pushed around, twisted in any way you like. When you say you love God what does it mean? It means that you love a projection of your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectability according to what you think is noble and holy; so to say, `I love God', is absolute nonsense. When you worship God you are worshipping yourself - and that is not love."

(Skip a paragraph or two)

"Throughout the world, so-called holy men have maintained that to look at a woman is something totally wrong: they say you cannot come near to God if you indulge in sex, therefore they push it aside although they are eaten up with it. But by denying sexuality they put out their eyes and cut out their tongues for they deny the whole beauty of the earth. They have starved their hearts and minds; they are dehydrated human beings; they have banished beauty because beauty is associated with woman."

(Skip a paragraph or two)

"Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought. It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent. To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict. You may ask, `If I find such a love, what happens to my wife, my children, my family? They must have security.' When you put such a question you have never been outside the field of thought, the field of consciousness. When once you have been outside that field you will never ask such a question because then you will know what love is in which there is no thought and therefore no time. You may read this mesmerized and enchanted, but actually to go beyond thought and time - which means going beyond sorrow - is to be aware that there is a different dimension called love. But you don't know how to come to this extraordinary fount - so what do you do? If you don't know what to do, you do nothing, don't you? Absolutely nothing. Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means that you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no centre at all. Then there is love."

--- Quotes on Love, 1980